The Kiamo Ko Memoirs
by lilxmzxit
Summary: Elphaba's lost and solitary years at Kiamo Ko: musings and moments of The Witch. Pretty exclusively book, but with a dash of lyricism to the prose as a tip of the hat to the Broadway musical. Please R&R: constructive criticism is always appreciated!
1. Chapter 1

A Foreword on: _The Kiamo Ko Memoirs_

Bits and pieces of fic based almost entirely on Gregory Maguire's _Wicked_. There's just a bit of a lyrical feel mixed in as a tribute to the Broadway musical. I never intended them to be a fully fledged narrative and they still aren't, but after I finished writing them and rereading them many times over I realized that there was indeed a sort of flow to the pieces. So I decided to put them in the order in which they string together most fittingly to me and compile them into one story. Take it as a collection of filmaic monologues, a series of cumbersome free-verse poetry, a bunch of elegant brain farts, whichever you prefer. All I ask is that you enjoy and review if the urge takes you!


	2. Twisted About the Heart

_::Twisted. Twisted. Why do you call me wicked?::_

The Witch stood on the parapet. Her lithe figure, typically so rigid, now arched back in a supple curve and bent into the breeze as she leaned against the battlements. Like a longbow swathed in black shrouds, the humming energy in her frame brimmed almost palpably from her form in the still of the Vinkus night.

_::The quiver or the arrow? Perhaps the bow. Perhaps. Don't give yourself too much credit in affairs.::_

Sleeplessness was no stranger to The Witch. By now it was a frequent caller and when she had thoughts that harried her like a persistent jackal, she knew better than to press herself into sleeping. Which was why, when the memories had come creeping in tonight, she had not hesitated to seek refuge on the tower top.

She had let her hair down tonight and it whipped around her now, the raven locks that Glinda had loved to admire during their time at Shiz a purple black in the midsummer moonlight. Fiyero had loved it too, her hair. Perhaps that's why she'd let it down tonight. When she'd done it, it had been on an impulse. On a whim, and she'd wondered why at first. It was not like her at all. Not the impulsiveness, that was common. But her hair she kept tamed and pinned. She liked to think it was to fool the world into seeing what she wanted: this façade of hardened, ill humored severity she'd fashioned for herself in her solitude. Or maybe out of her solitude. But perhaps it was more intended to fool herself into believing the illusion of tempered discipline she presented every morning to the mirror, which stared deaf and dumb and inescapably knowing, telling with its flaking gold leaf frame and scratched glass more than she ever wanted to hear from a mirror by its simply remaining silent.

Well, lies were lies and no escaping that. Especially not lies you told yourself. And if you didn't call them out on your own, someone else would. She was bitterly reminded of this when Chistery had, for a moment, not even recognized the verdant Amazon queen that climbed to the tower room in the twilight. He had fled to the top of a dusty bookshelf where he'd crouched and shrieked agitatedly until, almost heartbroken by his lack of recognition for reasons she didn't quite understand, Elphaba had lured him down with a scrap of old toast and a few placating words.

Fiyero. He had loved it when she wore her hair down. She closed her eyes to let herself remember, dark, thick eyelashes fluttering for a moment before settling completely. It somehow made the night lighter than before. The moonlight glowed soft and cool through her eyelids. He would run his strong fingers through her hair, brush it out of her eyes when it fell there. He told her once it looked beautiful spread in a halo about her head when she lay down. Then he had bent and lifted her body to his with one arm and held her close: she could still feel his warm heart beat. And for once, for a moment, she let the barriers fall and did not feel the need to be the strong one.

_::But Fae, you need me. I have to protect you from the evil in the world.::_

_::I __**am**__ the evil in the world.:: _she'd replied dryly, and had been about to say more. Would have said more, if he had not shaken his head, smiled, and kissed her.

A night bird's lute-like cry carried her back to the parapet on dark rustling wings from her reverie.

Had she been the sort to cry easily, she would have been shedding tears now. She almost wished she could. She wanted to let the tears course down her cheeks, a trickle of silent diamonds along a field of emeralds. To let it burn a little. What would it be like? To show how much she cared. To allow herself to admit she cared at all. To allow herself to admit…to admit how she missed him. It could be a welcome change. A warm spring after a lifetime's bitter winter of denial. Of course, it would have its inevitable spring drizzles and drippings of ice and uncomfortable, unfamiliar thawings, but it could be worth it. Like he had been. Like he was.

_::Yero my hero.::_ She'd called him. Because he had melted her heart.


	3. Missing

The warmth of his eyes. The warmth of his smile. The warmth of his hands. The warmth of his heart.

She missed them. They were how she had told him she loved him best. There were other ways to be sure, but none so deep and deep-heart-welled as this. Elphaba knew she was no poet. For all her cleverness and her sharp tongue, she would never uphold that vain pretense. There was little she could do to do justice to such a thing as love in words. Leave that to the masters and the troubadours.

Her fingers trembled for a moment, they like the last of fall's slender leaves resisting a force as willful and unseen autumn's breath. They moved by no sentient will of her own, but by the memory of him unforgettably seared bone deep, the love of him willingly branded soul deep.

The Witch gave a soft, wry breath of laughter. A soul. She had always doubted that she had a soul. But he had made her uncertain of her certainty in her own futile hollowness. He had made her begin to feel deeply – more deeply than she ever had for anything or anyone in her life. Or at least more deeply than she had allowed herself to ever feel before. But his presence had made something beautiful take root somewhere in the labyrinth that was her being. He had made it so, damn him, and it (whatever it was) had shaken her. He had, she realized. He had grown within her. He had taken root quietly, becoming a part of her in some inexplicable way so that now she felt surely, damn him again for shattering her hollow confidence, that she would be still whole and strong but somehow less if he left her. And she knew she did not ever want to feel less again, for with him it was as if her vision cleared, the grime on the mirror cleared away and she could see everything that she might ever be. And what she saw was wonderful. He lit her beautifully in a way she never knew she needed – she gave shade and tone to his brightness. And without him – without him, she'd be…what? A little darker.

She stood before the mirror again, its warped surface showing her everything she didn't want to see anymore. Everything that betrayed the presence of her Achilles' Heel. Everything that showed she felt. She forced herself to look with a shuddering breath of resignation. Her gaze into the mirror was defeat and triumph at once. A fallen Amazon goddess stared back at her as she studied the mirror's depths. Her reddened eyes still brilliantly glassy with unshed tears (gods! Did she still have tears left to shed?) glimmered back at her, her thick lashes still wet, her cheeks flushed, damp, stinging. And her wild hair loose – which she knew but would rarely admit to herself, she left down for him.

And now he knew she was not perfect. She smiled at that thought. The smile was a bitter one. It was a wonder he had ever had the notion at all. But then, that was part of his charm and she would never have him any other way.

And Elphaba could not help but wonder – did he still love her as he had before? Could he? After all she'd said. All she'd done.

He was distant in a strange way – different. More somber.

And she missed her smiling diamond prince who'd feel, who'd be without inhibition.

He'd held her once, not so long ago, his warm hands curling about her slight waist, fingers flickering up her back with all the quiet intensity and effect of fire, and she'd seen it in his eyes – she'd seen it come back, felt it in his touch. And then it was gone again and she longed for it back. Ached for it, thirsted for it in a way she had for nothing else. She thought she saw a glimmer of that selfsame wanting in his own eyes, a spark and ember and reflection of her own, and that alone gave her hope.

In the mirror as in a dream she saw him again, his face like the sun, his dark eyes bright with love, with spirit – with the man she knew. His strong arms wrapped about her, welcome soft and steadfast and sure. They warmed her to her bones and she could hear his heart beat and in that instant felt home again. She shivered with longing, with love, with something deeper and wiser than purely passion at his touch and stretched against him like a cat.

_::Don't lie to yourself, Elphaba, you fool. He'll never see you so again.::_

And the ghost of him faded silently away and dark Melancholy slipped quietly and morosely back in into the room before the door could shut behind him. Hello, old friend. The Witch sighed.

Turning from her lonely glass twin with a shudder, she bit her lip, flushing the coral pinkish bronze with worry. Maybe it was her fault. For not explaining, for not preparing. All she knew was that she wanted him back, wanted him to love her with all the tenderness, all the sincerity, all the intensity, all the passion he ever had.

The Witch turned to the suddenly to the mirror again, leaning on its cool surface, pressing her fingertips to it. Her half whispered words left small puffs of fog on the mirror's cool surface, were barely breathed aloud; as if perhaps by voicing them so softly she would not hope so much for the nearly impossible.

"Let me come back, Fiyero. Please. I miss you. I need you. Yero my hero…come back…."


	4. Night Sky Dancing

Tendrils of midmorning sun curled through the tower window, slipped across the stone floor and caressed the Witch's features with all the warmth and tenderness of the memory of a lover's touch. Her eyelashes fluttered in her sleep. Elphaba sat curled and slumbering at the sturdy rowan-wood table, her still-loosed hair strewn across its wear-worn surface. The night before the dark locks had glowed in the moonlight with a purple luster. Now they shone a warm silky black-gold in the new light of the young spring day. With the soft kiss of the sunlight came to the Witch's half-waking mind a dream of a memory.

_::Fae.::_

She knew his voice – knew it as well as she knew her own heart. No. No, that wasn't right, she thought. Because for all her probing wit and her old soul, there were parts of herself as indecipherable as the most archaic chapters of the Grimmerie were to her still. Mazes of complex runes, the very text so riddled with intricacies that even the most cautious and scholarly eye might simply wonder at their elemental mystery. She supposed it would all let itself be read in time.

So her heart was the wrong thing to say, then. If it was a matter of knowing, she would not yet use herself for an example. Not yet. If not herself, something so close – what then?

The sky, perhaps. The sky she knew, with all its constellations winking diamond bright in the cool velvety darkness. The gleaming ruby-tinged eyes of the Jackal here, the bronze-white stars of the Great Dragon's tail curling whip-like through the sky there. The Crow's outstretched wings to the South, the left pinions ending somewhere over Nest Hardings and the right wingtip extending out towards Ev through the darkening atmosphere. And spread wild and raw along the Western sky lay the constellation of Kumbricia. Ageless Kumbricia in all her quiet starry splendor held the westernmost half of Oz from Kvon Altar in the Outer Vinkus to Wiccasand Turning near the Pertha Hills in the curve of her heavenly body. The strewn stars of her hair had adorned the skies of the Thousand Year Grasslands since the Dreamtime. No one could remember the sky without them there. Elphaba could not count the times she'd stared up at the night sky as a young spindling grasshopper of a girl, quietly whispering the names of the silent stars to herself like a prayer.

_Casus, Balatro, Infinitus, Postremo, Magus, Somnium, Anima, Carmen._

As if to name those stars might carry her somewhere far from where she sat.

Yes, she knew the night sky well.

_::Fae?::_ he said again in that sweet sweet tenor. _::Fae.::_

And she felt his hand warm upon her shoulder, turned to see those star-brilliant hazel eyes fall gently upon her as though she were the most precious gem, the most beautiful vine that had ever sprung green from the wild earth.

_Anima, Carmen. Anima, Fuga._

_::I love you, you know?::_

_:Yes. Yes I do.::_

And she'd never meant any acquiescence more. Never felt something so strong and yet so quietly gentle so as to make her heart swell so, and so sweetly. She felt his fingers warm against her cheek, sensed them tracing the line of her jaw, coursing through her hair and wanted nothing more than to turn and wrap her arms about him. To let herself sink against his warmth, give up all pretenses – let them fall to the floor with stale inhibitions by their sides, and feel his strong arms lock it all away and them together and alone. What had the world ever offered her that he could not?

_::Fabala, why do you shut me out?::_

_::Not you. Never you. Only the world.::_

_::You'd never mean to – but you do. Let yourself go. Set yourself free.::_

He took her hand in his, kissed it once, slipped his other about her waist. Held her close and soft and warm. She breathed in deep the familiar scent of him: of cotton and spice and rain. Felt the warmth of his body like the sun on her skin.

_::Yero my hero, I love you.:: _she murmured.

_::Oh Fae. My Fae. My Sweet sweet Fae. Dance with me?::_

And Elphaba, drifting softly but suddenly awake, opened her eyes.


	5. Kumbricia's Pearl

The Witch found herself, not for the first time, on the moonlit parapets of Kiamo Ko. Below her and for miles stretched the living sea of swaying prairie that was the Thousand Year Grasslands. The long, slender blades swelled against the stone walls of the castle and she felt more like a beacon atop a lighthouse than a sorceress on a tower roof. On these clear nights, the moon glowed like a pearl in the sky. The Witch often fancied, on nights like these, that it was indeed a pearl, that it belonged to Kumbricia and that in the birthing days of Oz, the first witch herself had wandered these endless meadows, alone and unfettered. Elphaba could see her in her mind's eye: The Kumbric Witch, striding tall and thin, her long tangled hair twined about her lanky body at the bidding of the wind. Her moss green eyes and sunburned skin, her aquiline nose and high boned cheeks, and the glowing pearl, shapely as each of her small, unbound breasts, clutched in her long fingers. It was easy to imagine Kumbricia standing in bare, unornamented splendor amidst the ocean of grass, her rawboned features weatherworn and angular, with all the harsh beauty of a carved ship's figurehead. The siren of an Oz memories and ages past and the stuff of legends. The Kumbric Witch and her pearl-moon. So long ago and for mysterious reasons entirely her own, Kumbricia had flung it into the sky, and it had stuck there in the dark velvet, waiting. Waiting…for what, exactly? For…who? Elphaba wasn't sure. She opened her eyes, settled them upon Kumbricia's pearl, and let the night wind bend her, sweet and gentle as the grasses. :_:Who are you waiting for?:: _The moon wasn't giving up its secrets. It glowed with all the pristine mystery it ever had, and Elphaba still wasn't sure. She reached anyway.


	6. Lady Fate

The Witch sat and watched the thin, tawny ribbon of the path meander through the swaying grasses till it became a mere suggestion, an idea, a memory, a dream. She leaned back, took her weight on her palms which rested with their long and slender fingers feathering the cool stone of the keep's courtyard. Her glance up merited a view of spiky leaves and a fleeting golden flash of sun as the fronds shifted in the slight breeze.

_::Quite the poetic day.::_

Elphaba mused as she allowed her gaze to wander again. It eventually and inevitably wandered back to the path once more. Not that she was looking for anything [Of course she was, why did she insist upon lying to herself?]

She knew what she was looking for. Who she was looking for.

Not that she would admit it to herself.

Acknowledging her weaknesses was one thing. Wallowing in them was another. It was something she adamantly refused to do.

Wallowing led to self-pity, self-pity to depression, and all three combined left her feeling quite sluggishly like a sullen hippopotamus. The thought was not one to which she looked forward with any sort of relish and so she refused to glance down that road at all, let alone allow one foot stray in its direction.

She would not wallow.

Gods knew what it had done to her in the past.

The Witch sighed deeply just so she could breath in and breath deep the sweet air as she waited for…right. She wouldn't think till it happened – or didn't, whichever.

One thought slipped through. Damn.

But how she missed him. His warmth. Within, without. For he was. He was one of those rare people who was simply and miraculously warm in every way; a true serendipity and she loved every last ounce of him for it. She did not deserve him, but supposed she loved him even more for the fact that she knew how little she should deserve him and somehow he loved her anyway [she wouldn't, she realized, have him any other way].

Her sweet Yero. Sweet sweet boy. Wonderful man. Her beautiful Yero.

How had she ever been so lucky?

It was something she often thought about, often wondered over, but something she never would question in depth. He was too precious to question, too rare a diamond to chance losing. To question Lady Fate was to flirt with heartbreak. And for all her pertness, her impatience, her stubbornness and her willpower, she was no utter fool. Elphaba would not question Lady Fate.


	7. New Day Walking

The Witch took a tentative step into the dew-speckled grasses around Kiamo Ko. She had wrapped herself in a long cloak, and the thick soles of her combat boots sank into the loose earth. Still, she shivered and shrank away as the dew clung in diamond tears to the hem of her cape. It wasn't true, what the rumors said, that pure water could melt her. That was ridiculous, of course. But water, and tears too, for that matter, did burn. The memory of their acidic sting was enough to make her shy away from the sparkling ambrosia, even as she longed for its forbidden touch.

She paused there in the open, trembling like a deer, then took a step. Another, another, and the fear slipped and shambled away with a dry rattle of its many bones and left her to her own wondering silence in the still daylight. The morning held its breath and waited in soft sunlit luminosity for the world to move again. Elphaba paused once more, amber eyes glowing bright in the sun, dazzled by the brilliance of the day, then she reached out almost reverently to touch a dancing, flaxen rush and marveled at its soft, sun-born life. These steps. This morning. Fae wondered now for the first time what had compelled her to leave the safety of Kiamo Ko's stone womb. Wondered and remembered a dream and a man (perhaps they were one and the same) and found she did not regret it. This – this sun-soaked radiance, this myriad of colors and the soft dappling chiaroscuro that was the painting of the world in all its amaranthine kinesthesia. This was birth. This was life. This was flight.


End file.
